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December 23, 2010

I See a Dragon in My Future!

Dragon Dictation is a free voice recognition application for the iPad (also for the Iphone or Ipod Touch). I'm using it to write this blog post. I'm not typing this, Dragon is typing it for me. How cool is that? It's very easy to use and within seconds of downloading it on to my Ipad I was dictating an email.

I'm thinking about different genealogical uses for Dragon. I'm going to be attending the RootsTech conference in February (I'm an official Rootstech Blogger) and it seems to me that I can continue to write my daily blog posts using Dragon and that it will be much easier and faster for me then using my iPad keyboard.

Dragon allows me to speak punctuation commands such as "period" or "new paragraph". This lets me format my writing exactly as I want it. That's the part I'm having trouble getting used to but I assume it gets easier the more you use Dragon.

By dictating this blog post into Notes in Dragon I am able to pause and then resume where I left off. When I am finished my blog post I plan to correct any typos or errors and e-mail the post to myself. I could e-mail it directly to blogger to be automatically published on my Olive Tree Genealogy blog but this time I prefer to e-mail it to myself and copy and paste it into Blogger.

I experimented with Dragon last night by sending tweets to my Twitter but it seemed a little strange to be speaking to my Ipad in front of my husband!

And so this ends my first blog post typed entirely by Dragon as I spoke into the microphone on my IPad. I'm liking it and believe I can find many other uses for it in my Genealogy world.

6 comments:

Hi,I have used both speech recognition and OCR programs for years hoping that they would speed up some of my work. Despite repeated efforts, including Dragon Naturally Speaking and many other programs, I have always ended up going back to typing because of the problems with editing the wrong words and typos. Hope this works out for you.

Lorine,I'm finally getting around to trying Dragon Dictation on my iPad. There is a bit of a learning curve. I seem to have lost my first dictated note. But I'm impressed with the accuracy and while I don't see myself using it to compose a complete blog post, it will be a great way to get ideas on "virtual paper." I would be interested to know if dictation has become part of your routine.

I haven't made it part of my daily routine. I like it for a quick tweet but for longer things, it's time consuming so I didn't stick with it. I think if I did, it would work well for me for short blog posts and emails

I'm an incurable collector of
antiques, an avid genealogist and a messy but creative cook! I blog, i write history and genealogy books. My main genealogy website is Olive Tree Genealogy http://olivetreegenealogy.com/